SpaceBourne 2

chapeau au dévelopeur

(Updated review) I played it for 60+ hours. Unfortunately, some bigger issue appear later on which made me ultimately drop the title. Strong negatives: * The story is awful. It was continuously getting in my way of trying to have some fun, and nothing about it was interesting or enjoyable. I didn't really care about any character and drama felt forced. * It uses oblivion leveling system where if you increase your level, the game punishes you by making everybody in he game stronger. * On top of t he oblivion leveling it uses leveled weapons. Where instead of using your favorite gun/turret till the end of the game you have to keep finding upgrades with better stats. I had flashbacks of nioh loot sorting, in all honesty. And the ship has a LOT of components. * The upgrade system becomes problematic when you realize that you upgrade your weapons, armor, your ship components (nine types), ship guns, ship itself, and ship tier. If you have more than one ship, you have to dot hat again. * Best equipment is locked behind guilds, and there's three of them. You have to grind ranks to get the best stuff. But once you're done selection is random. * If you bought capital ship, you'll be dealing with hassle of calling this thing to you. Capital ships cannot dock at guild stations, but until you dock capital ship, you cannot call smaller ship. Once you dock the ship somewhere, you'll have to go back to that system to continue flying it again. Even though you can call normal ship to you. That seriously isn't fun. The grind finally killed my desire to continue playing. That's a bit unfortunate, as it is an ambitious project. You can find the original review below: ---original review (40 hours)--- So. This is a NEUTRAL review. I've picked negative, because there are a lot of issues. This is a very ambitious effectively one person project. And for one person project it is impressive. The problem is the game t ries to replicate AAA experiene. With cinematic intro, dramatic story, high level of details, multiple NPCs you meet and choices. In every scenario where the game tries that, it does not work well. There's too much junk, t he story is hard to take seriously, there are visual issues, overssights and so on. Somes objects have strange lods which look like semi-molten wax, there are environmental objects floating in ai, and by default the game for some reason starts with gamma value of zero (instead of 2.2) which makes everything dark to the point where you can't see anything. However, when you manage to fight your way through the "storyline", you're finally met with a very interesting empire management sim. Something akin to mount and blade warband in sapce. Except it doesn't really need high detail visuals and such. Meaning the dev could focus on gameplay over visuals, dial graphics down a LOT, it would save a ton of time, and result could be better. Instead players got this. Everything is janky, and some areas are pitch black with not a single light source. I'm also not convinced with RPG stats ideas. Willpower affecting ship shields sounds a bit odd to me. One of the disappointing moments was that there is no seamless transition between space and planes. Effectively it is "fast-travel based" movement, like in starfield. You can enter/leave atmosphere on planets, by plunging through the clouds, but it is a loading screen. Personally I was looking for Another moment is that I was looking for a sandbox. And not forced storyline. When the storyline give me some breathing room, the game becomes enjoyable. But then the game immediately interrupts the experience with more storyline, and more of pretend choices that change nothing. That's the rough idea of it. Proceed at your own risk, if you're thinking of buying it.

Do not recommend this game for a very simple but rather important reason: camera shaking. It is present in everything you do, from Third Person View to even ship cruising. Your character stands and waits at space station, literally idling, yet your screen moves back and forth since your character is moving his head back and forth. Not sure if developers know how things are different in real life, perhaps they also breathe same way and it all cancels out for them when they play the game. On other side, if you are fine with heavy breathing moving your view here and there, game is worth exploring. There is story, weapons and spaceships. And lots of opportunities to blow things up.

I really enjoy this game like really enjoy it I do wish that one could be able to form there own empire instead of having to pick a side later on It would be cool to be able to have shipyards and have my own patrol fleets and armadas that are not tied to another factions military but other than that really enjoy this

now if it had x box controller support unplayable with it currently some controlls for shooting dont work at all on controller

Some ground missions are bugged (since beta), the endless spawning of enemies just killing you and the game

Update May 26. Sorry to have to say there has been no significant improvement since my Dec 25 update. In fact it looks like the developer has walked. I started the game again to escape the story line bugs that were preventing progress (see below). I concentrated on the story line missions this time thinking I'd try and get them done before a glitch blocked further progress. I got further but I really did not like what happened. War maker mission causes all the factions to start upgrading their soldier level like crazy .. Another mission removes you from controlling your faction (the only aspect of the game that is enjoyable) and the ending is awful. It just feels like a slap in the face. Dec 25 Sorry to have to downgrade my review but the bad news keeps mounting up. I've overlooked many silly and irritating bugs assuming they would get fixed. But enough is enough. The developer has done some great things and the game could be really awesome ..BUT the project needs someone to put some discipline into it - to get long standing bugs fixed, to update guides to reflect the current game, to check releases before they go public. But no, the developer wants to prioritise adding loads more features!!!!!! Its not like the game is short of features- just that they are all problematic. It was ok throwing stuff at the wall during alpha and beta but not when we are suppose to be in a formal release. There have been a crazy number of patches in the last 2 weeks- one moment a bug is fixed then another patch comes out which reintroduces previous bugs. My key issues: The mission sequence. I now have 2 threads that have locked up. The main mission thread has me at build my first station- but with no steps left to complete. I have built my first station and upgraded it. The game knows this. I can visit it and walk inside it. It is listed in my structures. But the mission thread just doesn't advance. So this actually locks me out of key aspects of the game- I cant build a special ship that comes later - I cant buy a mother ship as I'm short of 1 character that comes later in the main story mission. Similarly the mission list has me at complete the starter quest for joining the Brotherhood. In the game I'm at level 3 of the Brotherhood and have their special ship. but does the mission tracker progress?- no. I go to war with a faction- I take their key systems, I win every battle and remove hundreds of ships and soldiers. The tracker for the war gives me 100%. And yet every 20 mins the enemy launches a raid on one of my systems and throws a force of 500 at me. I mobilise a reinforcement force of 2000 and kill it .. but 20 mins later the same happens... endlessly... So I have to time my operations to ensure I have this reinforcement force available... its just stupid. The enemy wont even take a peace treaty unless I sweeten it with giving them a system back. For some unknown reason I can only build Research facilities- Mining and factory facilities just don't build- no idea why. So my wars are focused on capturing systems with these facilities. I have no idea what controls system level or security level or castle level; I've seen mention of allocating troops to structures but this mechanic seems to have left the game. I don't know what controls the production output of facilities. Castle sieges give you very little- no plunder, no resources, and you don't even get ownership of the castle. At best it disappears at worst it stays! Having a trade route can bolster a system making it impossible for you to capture it. But I cannot see how to take the trade route out. The trade ship is suppose to progress round an established route every 60 or so minutes. But in my experience it just sits in one place. If you go there and board it and do all the things the brotherhood teaches you to destroy it- nothing happens. It is still shown as a trade route and the system is impervious to take over. In fact the whole trade system seems to be a half baked idea pushed into the game and abandoned. Faction hangers- these appear in a list of items including outposts, space markets and Trade hubs. You attack a system and eventually become its new owner. Any outposts, Space markets, trade hubs remain in the system. Faction Hangers initially remain but then vanish about a day later!! No message, warning or anything- the SpaceBourne fairy just takes it. Sub houses are another half baked system - I just cant see the point or understand it! In fact the whole diplomatic system needs a rethink. Neither do I understand why factions that I'm at war with let me use their stargates, and roam their systems without being challenged. They are the main things - I can look past constantly having to save in case I fall through the next lift floor, crash into a planet on my next warp, have a vending machine that has cross wired buy and sell and lost all colour coding of equipment, having my ship appear in a sort of disassembled form at the end of a jump and constantly resetting my view from first person to 3rd person, getting blocked in a room by my own squad... having more key presses needed in battle than I have fingers etc etc etc